


Of Elves and Men

by schrodingers__cat



Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: Analyzations, Character Study, Gen, It was rlly fun, It’s cool I promise, No beta I don’t have friends, Scientific, Written like a report, i think this is fairly well-written though, species study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-04
Updated: 2018-10-04
Packaged: 2019-07-25 04:50:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16190438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schrodingers__cat/pseuds/schrodingers__cat
Summary: A study by famed human philosopher Feall Sanachd, on comparing elves and humans and their lives.





	Of Elves and Men

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, good people! So no feelings are hurt, when I say the word “men,” it is the overarching term for all men, women, and children of the human race. Please refrain from stabbing me, just a poor philosopher, with a pitchfork simply because I was too lazy to write “men, women, and children” three hundred times. 
> 
> -Feall Sanachd

Now, I would like to make one thing clear: This is study was terribly done. My information was based off of grapevine rumors, botched firsthand accounts, local legends, and the four encounters I’ve had with elves throughout my entire career, during half of which they were attempting to murder me in my sleep. A subject I have studied at length, however is the subject of man, so as the only one of my colleagues not entirely obsessed with magic, I’m likely the most qualified to write this strange report. After all, if I don’t do it, who knows what crackpot will? 

I will begin with appearances, as they are the simplest of matters. Humans are, to simplify the explanation, mutts. Perhaps once they were separated by race, by area of land, but no longer. Skin ranges within any shade so long as it is vaguely related to brown, and eye color is nearly all shades on the color spectrum from orange (darkened to brown) at the beginning, to blue at the end of it. Humans have five fingers, rounded ears, and no obvious unique outward appendages. In fact, the only identifying feature besides facial appearance and build are the ridges on a human’s finger- known as a “fingerprint.” It is the only thing entirely unique to every human in existence. 

Elves are much more pureblooded, and as such have a much stronger connection to the primal sources. They never really inbred their races, so the borders remain extraordinarily clear. There are Sky, Star, Ocean, Earth, Sun, and Moon elves. Without going into an extraordinarily detailed account of the mysteries of elven appearances and differences between them thereof, I’m going to let the reader assume that their appearances correspond with their elements. Now as for what they all have in common, we can stick with the obvious, to start. They only have four fingers, a strange evolutionary dysfunction that I have yet to see cause them any problems. Their pointed ears reflect animalistic qualities, made for picking up singular sounds in high quality rather than a larger quantity of them. Their horns seem to perform the same purpose as a human fingerprint, as do their facial markings, which I recently discovered are not tattoos. Less obvious is that their features always seemed to be angled upward, with their high cheekbones and strangely-shaped eyes.

Now, we move on, still in the realm of the physical, but still more under the guise of functionality. I swear I did not cut anything open to gain this knowledge, though I did ask a Dark Mage, and I cannot speak for him.  
Physiologically, men are not that different from elves. The most important differences, I’d say, are wrapped into the ability to adapt. The ability to re-form to fit their current environment. The primal separations of elves allows them to only function comfortably within their primal source, and things connected with it. The Breach is perhaps the best example of this, though I was hoping to avoid any mention of the subject of war. The Breach, as most people well know, is a dark, barren, volcanic wasteland with perpetual cloud cover, frequent storms, suffocating ash, and, of course, lava. You can’t forget the lava. So who could ever thrive in such a place? Not moonshadow elves, without their home forests. Not earthborn elves, where the land is far too inferior for their precious gardens, and the where the ground is too hard for them to effectively manipulate. The sunfire elves are perhaps the only faction that could function with any comfort in the harsh environment.  
Therefore, I’ve found it personally very interesting that humanity lives on the Breach just as it lives in any other place. “Jack of all trades, master of none,” is the best way to describe it- instead of being all-powerful under a single source, men are relatively moderate under every source. In lands like the Breach, it evens the playing field. It terms of morale, it gives humanity an advantage previously unforeseen- living. Not suffering, not much boredom, not much discomfort. And yes, this applies to all biomes, I simply found the Breach to be the best example. I shall continue to refuse to bring too much war into this study, thank you very much. 

Now, normally we’d move on to culture and other sociological factors, but I’d like to take on a subject nestled between them that has been gnawing on my thoughts for quite some time... the lifespan issue. It’s a well known fact humans have what is known as a “sub-century lifespan” (at least, that’s how it’s known to elves), and elves live anywhere from two hundred years to a thousand, depending on their primal source. Earthborn and starlark elves are the only ones to ever have someone live past eight hundred, for example. A moonshadow or skywing elf may only live to three hundred at the very most, and averages at two. The oldest recorded human alive within the five kingdoms lived to a hundred and three. The average human lifespan ends at age seventy-eight.  
If your first thought was “what kind of effects would this have on a species” you’re going to love this next paragraph.  
It effects age of maturity. Elves are considered mature at age twenty-five, humans at eighteen. Strangely, though elves do seem to age slower as children, it is still at a speed very similar to humanity’s. There are just a few discrepancies that make the differences more glaring.  
It effects appearance and what is considered wise. An elf may look like a young adult for an entire human lifespan. An elf who looks middle-aged is considerably wise and experienced. An elf who looks old likely has all the questions of the known world and universe answered and enough violaberry chocolate pastries to last three elven lifetimes. A human who looks like a young adult has only been an adult for about ten years and, to be quite honest, likely has no idea what he or she is doing. A middle-aged human is more experienced, but lacking wisdom. An old human is wise enough, but considerably less grumpy than an old elf.  
Now on to what I consider my most interesting study on the affects of lifespan: the concept of change.  
For humans, change is daily. Humans practically change every day, learning and growing so quickly that someone could be an entirely different person when you see them again, versus when you last saw them perhaps four or five years ago. It can figure into the adaptability I mentioned earlier, as well- the ability to change their own selves in an almost shapeshifter-like manner to fit their surroundings.  
What I found to be very strange and yet incredibly fascinating was that the elven concept of change as an event and commonality barely exists. So ingrained are they in traditions that have existed for their entire, extensive lives that when a new era is upon them, they can’t bring themselves to change. Its the same as the aforementioned Breach situation- if they’ve lived in the forest for a hundred years, if they’ve lived on a snowy mountain for three hundred, they can’t function in that environment. They don’t know how. It led me to the rather depressing conclusion that this one attribute, this singular ability that humans have to change, adapt, and alter, and therefore innovate and invent- it’s the only advantage humans have against elves. It’s the one thing keeping the elves from trampling men under their four-toed feet with every battle.  
Fascinating, isn’t it?  
One might even call it the cause of the invention of Dark Magic.  
That’s a study for another time, however. 

To move onto a slightly less psychological topic, there are always the notions of culture for us to fall into when things get too complicated.  
I’d actually managed to find myself an interview in a neutral place with a family of skywing elves that harbor a small amount of sympathy for humans. When I asked the one who spoke the most, called Adhar Cloudgiver, he vaguely alluded to an absent brother, but I didn’t pry.  
Elven culture is, as one might expect, full to the brim with magic. I’ve never been to Xadia myself, but I’ve seen paintings of old from the time before the spilt, and it looks beautiful- yet somehow, the same as the five kingdoms we know and love. Elven culture has celebrations, music, and festivals, just like our own, though with much more magic and an incredibly large focus on the primal sources and dragons. Dragons, it seems, inspire everything within Xadia as much as if they were worshipped. Scale patterns, wing designs, and the emblems of the most important dragons are as common within Xadia as imagery of the primal sources. The six elven races are somehow both united and separate. They live and breathe their own source, their own people, but are always able to come together in harmony, whether it is to battle or to their annual Dyrcreinis Festival. Pairs between sources, and therefore children of multiple, are not unheard of but are quite rare. What is quite interesting is that human culture, though the races have been intermixed beyond recognition, remains diverse and numerous. Some things have a more widespread influence, like the weeklong Flameheart festivals, but the celebrations, festivals, and musical influences remain susceptible to the area of land and the person performing them.  
Language as well is a strange concept. The human language, called the Common Tongue but is usually referred to as Common, is actually descended from Draconic, the language of the dragons. Thousands of years of separation led to the evolution of Draconic into what we now know as Common. The relationship can be clearly seen in many words, such as the Common word “magic.” In Draconic, they call it “magicae.”  
According to Adhar Cloudgiver and his family, elves once had their own language, also evolved from Draconic, but it was lost to time and through the war and many failed peace talks, somehow they picked up Common (albeit a strongly accented dialect).

Something that I found very strange, while speaking to Adhar, his mother, his sister, his father, his uncle, his grandmother, was how obvious the differences were, standing next to so many elves, and yet... how obvious the similarities were.

It is with these thoughts I end my study, and I bid you all a cheerful farewell.

With respect to King Viren, and love for our true King Harrow, his wife, and his sons, I wish all of my readers a happy life under an oppressive usurper’s rule. 

If I get arrested for that last remark, someone bail me out.

With regards,

Feall Sanachd, Philosopher of the Ivory Tower

**Author's Note:**

> Schrodinger’s Cat here! This was absolutely a self-indulgent way to get out all my emotions on elves and humans and my unfortunate habit of analyzing everything I see. It was super fun to write and I hope it was just as fun to read, although I’m still not totally sure about posting it, haha. Thanks for reading, love ya!!


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